


Hard-Knock Life

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Juris Imprudence [8]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-19
Updated: 2016-03-19
Packaged: 2018-05-27 17:07:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6292723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the comment_fic prompt: Any, Any, A Hard Knock Life (Annie). Daniel Jackson, Guardian ad Litem.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hard-Knock Life

When Sam returned to the office at the end of a long morning of depositions, she came across Daniel sitting in the break room, staring off into space and sipping from his favorite mug of coffee. He looked more tired than she felt.  
  
"Hey, you all right?"  
  
"I don't know whether to laugh or cry," he said.  
  
Sam, who'd planned on getting coffee to go and retreating to her office to spend some quality time on a memo, paused. She sat down with him. "What happened?"  
  
"Had a regular review at court today. My client's this adorable little girl, four years old, big brown eyes, curly black hair. Cute as a button. When the judge asked her if there was anything she wanted to say, she stood up, and before I could stop her, she was in the middle of the well of court, singing _It's a Hard Knock Life_ from Annie, and she even had a little dance to go with it. She recently saw the movie for the first time."  
  
Sam burst out laughing. "She really did that? In open court?"  
  
The corner of Daniel's mouth twitched. "Yes. The bailiff wasn't going to tackle her. It's juvenile court. And once her song and dance were done, she curtsied and sat back down beside me."  
  
"I wonder what that movie is like, to kids in foster care, or orphans," Sam murmured.  
  
"If you're not a fan of musicals, it's annoying," Daniel said, and something in his tone spoke of bitter familiarity with the experience.  
  
Sam still didn't know much about him, just that he spoke every language under the sun, spoke incredibly quickly in all of those languages, and had an amazing talent for spotting patterns and synthesizing so many tiny, random pieces of information stored in his brain. She liked him, though. Even though he wasn't much of a hard scientist – few attorneys were – he sometimes had some brilliant insights into her work.  
  
"It must have been funny to watch."  
  
"It was. No one knew what to do. Do we stop her? Do we just let her do it? I think our indecision decided for us, and the judge had a good laugh, so that was fine. And she was so pleased with herself, because she'd been so brave. And after she was excused from the hearing, we let the judge know that police found her mother over in Pike's Park, that her mother had overdosed on heroin sometime last weekend, and now that little girl has no one, and the team is figuring out how to tell her."  
  
The mirth faded from Daniel's eyes, and he took another sip of his coffee, his gaze going distant once more.  
  
"You know," Sam said, "I don't know how it is you don't cry every single day. And don't say it's because you're a man."  
  
Daniel shrugged at her and drank some more coffee. "What makes you think I don't?" And he stood up and headed back to his office.  
  
The next day, Sam heard Jack whistling the tune to _It's a Hard-Knock Life_ as he puttered around the office and tried to avoid the paperwork Walter kept trying to bring him. And then she saw Lorne of all people knock on Daniel's open door.  
  
"Yes?" Daniel asked.  
  
"I heard you were looking to have portraits of done of your child-clients in state's custody, so they could have pictures of themselves hung up in their foster homes," Lorne said.  
  
"I am," Daniel said, slowly, warily.  
  
"I'm an amateur photographer in my spare time," Lorne said. "If you ever want help."  
  
Daniel snorted. "Spare time? You?"  
  
Lorne laughed politely. "I know, sir. But if you ever do want help, feel free to let me know." And he resumed his duties.

The next Friday, when Sam had no court and no appointments and could lounge around the office in jeans and a t-shirt and really throw herself into preparing an appellate brief that she and Woolsey were going to argue together, she walked into some kind of celebrity photo shoot. Lorne had set up lights, a backdrop, and a table laden with baked goods. Kids were milling all around, eating baked goods, letting Rodney (Rodney!) comb and fix their hair, letting John tie their ties. Caseworkers and foster parents hovered on the edges of the bullpen, holding hangers with fancy outfits on them. Daniel was sitting on the floor in the corner beside one of those carpets that was designed to look like a map of a town, and he and a little girl with curly dark hair and big brown eyes were pushing little toy cars around the carpet. Jack was crouched beside him, rolling a ball back and forth across the carpet with a little blond toddler boy.  
  
Cam came out of the break room with a boy riding on his shoulders. The boy had frosting from a cupcake smeared around his mouth and in Cam's hair. Jonas careened around the corner after a child and with another child on his heels. Sam reached down and picked up the first child smoothly, and the child giggled, kicked her feet. Jonas cast her a grateful look and picked up the child who'd been chasing him and went in search of the adult responsible for the child. Vala trailed past with a pack of teenage girls following her and eyeing her massive cosmetics box hungrily.  
  
And then Lorne called for the first child to step up, and the chaos slowly resolved itself into some semblance of order.  
  
Sam learned, years later, that apart from one picture of Daniel from around the time he was born, the only photos that existed of him from between the ages of eight and sixteen were tiny juvenile mugshots of him taken every year on his birthday by a social worker and kept in his foster care file, and if she cried for him just a little bit, it wasn't just because she was a woman.


End file.
